3rd straight loss embarrassing for Avs

Colorado's slide continues vs. lowly Florida

DENVER -- In the words of coach Patrick Roy, he and his Avalanche players had "a talk" Saturday morning.

While what happens in the room stays in the room in hockey, one detail that Roy revealed was the need to "manage the game" better, which included the need to stop taking penalties in the offensive zone.

The Avs went on the ice Saturday night and violated that very exhortation in what ended up being an embarrassing 4-1 loss to Florida at the Pepsi Center. It was Colorado's third consecutive loss and fourth in the last five games.

The Avs committed one dumb penalty after another against the bottom-feeding Panthers in the first two periods, and their penalty-killing unit and goaltending were not up to the task.

"It's not so much the effort, but I did not like our focus tonight," Roy said. "When you feel the game is slipping away from you, you have to keep it simple. With us, we tried to score three goals in two minutes to get back the lead. We're going to have to learn to be patient and take the game as it (comes). They played last night, so if we can keep it to one goal entering the third, you never know."

Everything the Avs did earlier this season, they're doing in reverse now. When they took the occasional penalty, they killed it off. In this game, Florida's first three goals essentially came on the power play. True, only one of them went into the books as a real PP goal, but the other two came right as Avs players (Nate Guenin on the first, Jan Hejda on the second) came out of the penalty box after serving their infractions.

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In the game's first 11 minutes, Avs forwards Gabe Landeskog and P.A. Parenteau took offensive-zone penalties, which seemed to put the team on its heels. Parenteau's penalty -- hooking behind the Florida net -- led to Brad Boyes' goal at 12:40 that made it 1-0.

The Avs of the early season seemed to play with no fear, with that "Why not us?" mentality permeating everything. Now, everyone seems to take big gulp when penalties happen, or when the puck is turned over.

"It's three in a row and people can start pushing the panic button, but we're not," Landeskog said. "We're still committed as a group. Whether you guys push the panic button or not, we're still the same team in here and will approach every game the same way.

"(Tonight) I don't know if it was lack of discipline or whether there were some tough calls against us, but doesn't matter. We've still got to kill those penalties."

The earlier Avs, the team that started 14-2, got something from all four lines most nights. Not now. Since Alex Tanguay went down with a knee injury, the Avs have lost four of six games and aren't getting much offense from the bottom two lines -- and the top two lines seem to be feeling the effects of more concentrated checking on them.

The Avs' earlier fast-skating, up-the-ice approach produced a lot of opposition penalties and easy power-play goals. Saturday, the Avs drew only one early-game penalty on Florida, then did nothing on the power play. Florida got the next four power plays and had the Avs pinned in their zone most of the time and got results.

The Avs were down 2-0 before getting a Ryan O'Reilly goal at 7:23 of the second period -- and started to get some momentum. But it all disappeared when Hejda was called for slashing at 11:51.

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